Tiny La Pietra had a girls basketball season to remember this year.

The "reward" is shaping up as unforgettable, too, but for all the wrong reasons.

A matter of days after all the celebrating was over in the Lady Panthers' 13-2 season, Interscholastic League of Honolulu Division II championship and fourth-place finish in the Hawai'i High School Athletic Association Division II girls basketball tournament, the head scratching began.

That's because La Pietra, an all-girls school with one of the smallest enrollments (245 for grades 6 through 12) in Division II, has been ordered "promoted" to play in the powerful Interscholastic League of Honolulu's Division I for the 2007 season.

Sacrificed would be a better term.

It would be one thing if La Pietra was a rising powerhouse, a hoops factory hiding in the shadows of Diamond Head that reloads from one remarkable season to the next. The truth of the matter is that La Pietra, which doesn't cut anybody who turns out for its teams, had the best season in its 42-year existence this year. Its once-in-a-blue-moon season produced its only ILH title and state berth.

When it might again ascend to those heights is anybody's guess, but it probably won't be this year. Even in Division II. Not with the loss of a couple starters, including the school's best player, Courtney Gaddis, who is transferring to Kalani for her senior year.

So La Pietra is a curious choice to get bumped up to Division I, where it will be banging its head against the best of Kamehameha, Punahou, etc., opponents that have six and seven times the enrollment to draw from.

But, then, you get the feeling this is less about what is right and more about what is simply expedient in the overall picture. It is numbers and formulas, not what's best for the students involved or striking a competitive balance.

Because the HHSAA uses membership formulas to determine how many berths a league gets in the state championships, the ILH feels compelled to field at least six girls basketball teams in Division I to hold on to the two state berths it receives. To drop below six would, depending upon how other league memberships line up, put the ILH, historically the state's strongest, in jeopardy of receiving one state berth. Which would really bring an outcry.

So, instead of making the hard call in its annual restructuring, it is easier for the ILH to fall back on some formula to determine who goes where. Easier still when the short straw is handed to somebody like La Pietra, short on numbers and tradition.

Formulas are nice and can often be convenient. But there are always exceptions to the rule. At some point there has to be room for common sense to enter the equation, too.

And common sense in this case should tell the powers that be this is an idea that should have been sent back a while ago and this is an episode that should not be repeated.

A school's basketball coach shouldn't have to close a meeting with his brethren by saying, with no sense of modesty, "hope you guys take it easy on us this year."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.